> Launched in June of 2021, it was billed as a buzzy new tech publication from prestigious venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz — and a way to sidestep the legacy media entirely and take the message of technological progress directly to readers.
Ah, the legacy media with their pesky questions. Why can't people just accept that Adam Neumann is a visionary, and that pay-to-earn crypto games are the future? Guess I'll have to start my own paper to set the record straight! /s
Despite the premium domain name (future.com), the site itself looks and reads like your typical Medium.com publication.
However, you have probably seen a few Andreessen Horowitz blog shitposts (sorry, this is the appropriate term given the bullshit density) about crypto scroll by on HN.
Yeah, let's pretend that the VC coverage and legacy media coverage of for example, SBF recent debacle was stellar. Not saying VC's will fix this, but someone needs to.
There are good journalists out there, they just have been long fired from their news rooms and have accepted that the owners of the mass media are in control of the narrative.
> they just have been long fired from their news rooms and have accepted that the owners of the mass media are in control of the narrative
The only useless stories on FTX I’ve seen has been through HN comments calling them out. The FT, Bloomberg (in particular, Matt Levine) and Journal have each called it a fraud from the beginning.
Bloomberg has been been pro-crypto, and a friend to SBF in particular. Levine writes a great column, but he never called FTX a fraud (if you’re referring to the podcast episode that is well known, they were discussing other crypto businesses there, not FTX). In fact he has discussed how his basic assumption that SBF was competent and making money lead him astray. He didn’t consider the possibility that their trading strategies didn’t continue to work into the ‘20s, even though they were making statements on twitter that kinda indicated that they were simply long crypto and no longer successful with complex trades.
Levine wrote a whole enjoyable issue of Bloomberg about crypto that was moderately bullish! He thinks it’s kinda neat. That’s nowhere near the hype you hear from the bitcoin weirdos, but, you know, much more bullish than “a scam that should be made illegal,” which is also a mainstream take.
> wrote a whole enjoyable issue of Bloomberg about crypto that was moderately bullish! He thinks it’s kinda neat
You may be missing the sarcasm. I think crypto is neat, intellectually. I also think it’s a scam, and everyone in it will lose money and reputation, but I’m not going to put one hundred percent confidence in that view.
These are mutually compatible opinions. Read Levine’s insider trading takes and see if you think he’s pro insider trading.
Matt Levine is an opinion columnist, his job is to give commentary rather than to break news. Bloomberg overall has been pro-crypto (they have a crypto publication), but Levine's tone has always struck me as “finds it interesting but pretty skeptical of the real-world value”.
The show Silicon Valley is still spot on with their satire. In the show there's a media outlet that writes badly about the company so they just outright buy the media outlet.
This comment would seem a lot more insightful if the legacy media wasn't, at this very moment, giving Sam Bankman-Fried a wet sloppy one. Where, exactly, are the pesky questions?
Pando shut-down? That’s a shame. They did some decent reporting, were my source of truth through my startup days (after TechCrunch sold to AOL, and it lost any credibility for me).
Yeah, I dunno. Doesn't seem like traditional media were very critical of crypto and more often than not tried to ride the wave of enthusiasm of each technological new thing. The only area traditional media were critical were areas that threatened their own existence and then they'd "huff, huff, long form journalism, huff huff, investigative journalism" but then we see such things as crypto scams and laptop scandals ignored and more often than not, if something was counternarrative it was labelled "disinformation" whatever it was.
Or, you know, because the "legacy media" had an order to shit on tech and not report neutrally: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33473275 (except SBF, of course, they were allowed to praise him)
But no, of course, it was because they had "questions" and everything in tech is Adam Neumann and Theranos.
Deliver me from thin-skinned billionaires trying to bankroll their own sycophant "news media". Just because the NYT (which does not represent "legacy media" any more than a16z represents the tech industry) had a few editors and reporters with illusions of grandeur, doesn't lend any more credibility to the money bags people.
I have had a target painted on my back before by someone with lots of money because they couldn't take a piece of criticism that I had for their company. Do you know how that feels? Normalizing retaliatory behavior by rich people (and yes, this outfit was part and parcel of a media strategy that included that) is destructive to civil society - while what the NYT did (though unprofessional) is still a normal aspect of a marketplace of ideas.
Compare this behavior with Jeff Bezos. For all his faults, he did something infinitely classier. He actually bankrolled a news organization that has a global presence and practices journalistic excellence - and did not try to meddle in its editorial policy beyond that (or if he did, it was so subtle as to be imperceptible).
Four of the top five largest companies are tech companies. Tech is arguably the most powerful industry in the world. It has a huge impact on almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives.
The goal of journalism is to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted", so why should publishers not take a critical stance toward some of the most comfortable people in the history of humankind?
Journalists should always be skeptical of everything, but not default to opposition without cause. They shouldn't work under orders to paint a certain industry in a negative light without regard for what's actually happening, especially when there's a conflict of interest as players from that industry compete with their companies.
If there's something happening in tech that worthy of criticism, criticize it. If there's something worthy of praise, praise it. And for the rest: report it. Only presenting negative things is about as useful as only presenting positive things. But it feels more journalistic, "speaking truth to power" and all that. It's not, negativity just sells better.
It reminds me of Paul Graham's old essay on PR firms, which unintentionally(?) contained the best advertisement for the NYT I've ever read.
> At the other extreme are publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Their reporters do go out and find their own stories, at least some of the time. They'll listen to PR firms, but briefly and skeptically. We managed to get press hits in almost every publication we wanted, but we never managed to crack the print edition of the Times.
Never heard of Future.com but I guess he needs to cut costs everywhere as he's been losing money betting huge on crypto and probably is realizing he is losing money on Adam Neumman too. Probably lucky he missed getting scammed on FTX as he supposedly could not invest due to being an investor in Coinbase
I’m not sure that’s true. Semafor reported that a16z's returns were 15x at the beginning of 2022 [1]. Obviously that’s probably lower now but the reason they were so high is that they got inside access to their companies’ tokens and dumped them on retail before the crash. Crypto has been an upward transfer of wealth on an unprecedented scale.
It still comes down to cost/benefit -- no matter how small the cost monetarily, there's still the conceptual/attention/time aspect, and it's always possible for the benefit to be so little that the cost isn't justified.
My suspicion is that Coinbase may not be as solvent as we would like either. There have been too many exchange scams to truly believe anyone is clean.
We now know that outright market manipulation at a massive scale was happening through ftx, there is minimal reason btc can’t fall back to 2013 levels with such schemes out of the picture.
If you’ve been through enough cycles, you know what things like this mean and it usually means the opposite of what the general public thinks. The public will think that it means get out of risky tech bets now. Start thinking about getting out of risky tech bets when Future.com type sites launch, for VC firms are using their media capabilities and unloading their bags.
June 15, 2021 was a nice time to start thinking about restructuring your portfolio.
Conversely I think now is a good time to think the other way. The European Central Bank is publishing papers about how Bitcoin failed. No one wants to invest in anything risky and wants to only buy T-bills. The Nasdaq is down 28.3% YTD. The FED has admitted they need to slow rate hikes. Putin is 70 and has pancreatic cancer and Parkinson’s, in addition to many in his own country wanting him dead. No market condition lasts forever.
>Putin is 70 and has pancreatic cancer and Parkinson’s,
I'd definitely love to see a source for that that's half credible. I've seen enough reports of bad health and impending death for many famous people for many years to take few of them seriously without a decent source or good evidence. This applies especially when it's someone that lots of people would love to see fall off the world stage as soon as possible. Wishful thinking turned speculation and all that..
This seems to be a good summary. Of course it is always going to be tough to know the truth about the health of such a public figure. For me it is enough to believe something is definitely amiss, but maybe I’m more optimistic than most.
The media side is the sell side the VC side is the buy side. You trumpet your companies and people so you have more brand around them. Other people buy into those companies and brands which increases the value of those items. Rinse and repeat until you go to the public markets or found an exit worthwhile.
They realized that buy having strong promotion that increases the perceived value of their people, companies and founders. It also makes getting LPs easier.
Look to Elon for a core example of this phenom.
Arguing if they are a media company or a VC is irrelevant - it serves the same purpose.
Probably - Clubhouse had a lot of action before they really started hyping them. That failure probably hurts a bit since there was a lot of literal time spent speaking on platform which I think they truly thought Clubhouse was going to be a lasting change. I think the discovery aspect and the spammy, vapid conversations on platform once you reached scale tanked that product.
That said that if there was an audience for their efforts still functionally valuable for the time spent on platform.
One could argue YC is close to that too. But instead of having them in house - their relationships with TechCrunch, HN, etc are a broad megaphone to their desired audience.
It'd sure be interesting to see what they spend on marketing and PR vs. other VC firms. Only because I think of their product being "successful exits", I lean toward a framing of "VC with an emphasis on content and brand marketing".
Interesting enough, it was in August that I received a reachout for them, where they offered to pay me to write for Future.com and also keep my rights and re-publish later. I declined off the bat [1], because as I checked the site, the a16z association was pretty clear and I personally wanted to avoid being associated with the biggest crypto VC investors.
It sounds like those were the last few months when the publication was still running. I wonder if they simply struggled to find people to write?
When I was a coder in my 20s, one of my co-workers came back from some conference with a glossy flyer for a new game company startup. It had a lineup of people in various costumes: cowboy, astronaut, soldier. It said something like, "We're looking for superstar developers to create the next level in gaming. If that's you, come join us."
I sure wish I had paid more attention to that flyer for the fledgling Electronic Arts :-)
Yep, exactly -- I had life emergencies that somewhat excuse my lack of foresight, but I can't help but think my life would be very different if I had joined EA back in...1982?
Twitter is firing people left and right, then bringing some back only to fire them again. Seemingly without direction. The only reason I could see Twitter being a good place to go for a young coder is the potential to work closely with Musk, as the environment, other staff, and problem set are all very unlikely to be beneficial for one's knowledge or career. I doubt Musk would invest much personal capital in a random young programmer, though Im open to being told I'm wrong there, as I recognize the media itself has a strong bias against him.
I'm honestly not sure what the basis was when this was posted.
If you're a coder in your 20's and you're not degrading yourself for the chance to be in the same room as a wealthy man that doesn't care an iota about you or your life, what are you even doing? /s
You may not owe wealthy men better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. The issue is what this sort of bile does to us, in our own community.
I recognize this as reactionary and low value, and will refrain from similar in the future. I fail to see how it is a personal attack, though. If you have the time (I know you're busy around here), the connection would be elucidating. I don't see lampooning a statement another has made as a personal attack on that person, especially when I'm attacking the content of the statement with no regard for its maker.
Ahh, so an attack on Musk as opposed to Marc. Makes sense. I wasn't intending to make Musk look bad with that statement, just pointing out what I believe to be the fallacy in Marc's viewpoint, but I get how your interpretation would be the common one. Thanks!
I'm a coder in my 30s now. But when I was a coder in my 20s, FWIW almost all the wealthy (male) investors I interacted with were not degrading towards myself and my peers FWIW. And the ones that were tended to be in their 20s or early 30s.
i am in my 30s now and in my 20s they were super nice to me. its just that in retrospect i see how that was a tactic to exploit me. and to be very clear i benefited from my relationships with them quite a bit! but a spade is a spade and luck had a lot to do with my exits. if i hadn't been so lucky they would have just exploited me without there being ends to justify the means
In this thread: HN fails to understand flattery, a behavior that features heavily in popular culture with a clear record in literature dating back 3,000+ years, and a heavily-covered topic in early childhood education since time immemorial.
Also, it's survivorship bias, to a degree. Being nice is just as much tool as being smart, and you can wield it with intent that is just as malicious. Truly successful people have to wield many tools successfully, it's only natural that one of the easiest to master is commonly used.
You never know what people's intent is, and you should assume the best until proven otherwise, but like you say, a spade is a spade, and being nice is useful to the people being nice.
I wasn't trying to imply that Musk would do any degrading. He does however expect the employees to do it themselves, given the working hour expectations and minimal consideration for stability he's given Twitter's employees.
I say this as someone who sees nothing wrong with cranking out 60+ hour weeks if that's your thing.
Gordon Gekko type behavior is pretty rare around the Bay Area in public. You'd be shocked to see how some top financiers and executives act in private among peers who can (supposedly) be trusted. The mask really comes off, especially after a few drinks and some recreational pharmaceuticals.
hmmm you seem like the exact sort of chap i'd love to hire! plz send resume as well as a signed consent for the doors to be locked from the outside while you are inside the (mandatory) office!
Is an archive.org entry admissible in court? Is there a legal precedent for this?
Would it be admissible as evidence of Russian war crimes in the Ukraine war for example? Evidence of ear crimes put up on social media, taken down because they violate terms of service, but still preserved in a way that validates they're legitimate.
Designing a system that can't be modified is an interesting exercise, and potentially could be one of the few where a blockchain might actually be useful.
This may help dispel some errant thoughts: Unless there is an authority for verifying records made to an immutable, authenticated, verified, distributed, bft ledger, multiple distinct versions of the same event can be recorded and the act and content recorded for posterity. The ledger's guarantees merely cover the boundary of the act of recording, but not the thought that is recorded.
So, opinions alert:
Truth is not a balance sheet. It is not a mathematical object, in its entirety.
Authorities will always be necessary. This will require social trust.
Social trust is the natural byproduct of healthy societies and its erosion a leading indicator of subsequent demise.
I'm a bit confused by what you're saying. It sounds like you're implying there's 3 different objects here but then you talk about only 2 in your opinion. Accuracy/authenticity of the digital content, authenticity of the distribution of that content, and the interpretation of that content (using external context).
I'd think the first is a mathematical/cryptographically solvable problem, assuming you trust (human decision) whatever hardware/software generates the content. The 2nd is solvable in a decentralized way when the first is solved. and the latter is probably always a human/societal decision.
But why does the need for social trust impact technological solutions to the first two? Especially when deep fakes become more and more relevant in society.
The first is not mathematical. Any device that relies on mathematics at its core will fail to meet the demand of "is this true?" (Yes it can sign, authenticate, and verify (and store) sequences of 0s and 1s.)
The second is a social phenomena by definition. Authority affects the suspension of disbelief. That is [one of] its primary function. At best technology can stake a claim to subordinate qualities of reliability of function, and fidelity to specifications. This tech is certified implementation of such and such wonderful design. It's an 'authoritative' realization. There is the limit for authority of technology.
Finally, trust.
Picture this trial in an imaginary 'hate hour' type of country. The defendant is a political prisoner.
"Your honor, these facts have been established mathematically. Unequivocally, these messages were sent and signed by the defendant. This is a proven fact."
"Your honor, they put a gun to my client's privates and had him sign that message which he didn't even write with his keys."
So on to trust. Continue imagining that you are a "red-pilled" citizen of that society watching it on the tubes. Now try being blue-pilled and repeat the exercise. What technology will rid us of these pesky colored pills?
--
We should not waste resources on solutions that can not even theoretically address the critical issues around (perceived) truth, authority, and trust, since these are ultimately and fundamentally human social issues.
Beyond costs-benefits considerations, a secondary ill effect of the blockchain madness here is obfuscating the matter just discussed and creating a pervasive errant thought in a portion of the lay public that technology has obviated the need for authority and trust on certain matters, contrary to the actual state of affairs.
p.s. technology should only be pervasively adopted to improve the human condition.
Do you treat truth and authenticity as the same thing? A camera can take and sign a picture while proving it's not compromised. That picture is authentic but depending on the context the picture is presented in may or may not be true.
I don't really understand, can someone explain to me what is going on in Ben Horowitzs' head? He wrote excellent books, seems like a really smart and nice person... And then decides to double down on Neumann, and also go in on nfts? What is the thought process?
It's a shame that Future.com didn't pan out. I could care less what people like Kara Swisher or anyone at The New York Times [1] thinks about technology or the companies changing industries. The only people who seem to write are activists.
“Let’s make a ‘newspaper’ about how good and clever we are at business!” sounds like something you’d hear somebody say after seeing them snort a massive line of adderall.
What’s next? “Let’s start a newspaper about how enormous my dick is and my completely real ability to do a standing backflip!”
https://archive.ph/H0C9n
thank you!
serisously this is my favorite practice on HN. i have hated medium and business insider for putting up bullshit paywalls for ever
> Launched in June of 2021, it was billed as a buzzy new tech publication from prestigious venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz — and a way to sidestep the legacy media entirely and take the message of technological progress directly to readers.
Ah, the legacy media with their pesky questions. Why can't people just accept that Adam Neumann is a visionary, and that pay-to-earn crypto games are the future? Guess I'll have to start my own paper to set the record straight! /s
Despite the premium domain name (future.com), the site itself looks and reads like your typical Medium.com publication.
It's remarkable that despite being an avid HN reader this is the first time I've heard of future.com. Probably explains why they're shutting down.
However, you have probably seen a few Andreessen Horowitz blog shitposts (sorry, this is the appropriate term given the bullshit density) about crypto scroll by on HN.
I honestly thought that was Future plc (https://www.futureplc.com/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_plc), a famous (and somewhat-notorious) owner of dozens of publications.
That's exactly what I thought!
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=future.com
A couple of these have significant engagement (one of them has 483 comments), but most have 1 or 2 points & 0 comments.
Yeah, let's pretend that the VC coverage and legacy media coverage of for example, SBF recent debacle was stellar. Not saying VC's will fix this, but someone needs to.
There are good journalists out there, they just have been long fired from their news rooms and have accepted that the owners of the mass media are in control of the narrative.
> they just have been long fired from their news rooms and have accepted that the owners of the mass media are in control of the narrative
The only useless stories on FTX I’ve seen has been through HN comments calling them out. The FT, Bloomberg (in particular, Matt Levine) and Journal have each called it a fraud from the beginning.
Bloomberg has been been pro-crypto, and a friend to SBF in particular. Levine writes a great column, but he never called FTX a fraud (if you’re referring to the podcast episode that is well known, they were discussing other crypto businesses there, not FTX). In fact he has discussed how his basic assumption that SBF was competent and making money lead him astray. He didn’t consider the possibility that their trading strategies didn’t continue to work into the ‘20s, even though they were making statements on twitter that kinda indicated that they were simply long crypto and no longer successful with complex trades.
Levine wrote a whole enjoyable issue of Bloomberg about crypto that was moderately bullish! He thinks it’s kinda neat. That’s nowhere near the hype you hear from the bitcoin weirdos, but, you know, much more bullish than “a scam that should be made illegal,” which is also a mainstream take.
> wrote a whole enjoyable issue of Bloomberg about crypto that was moderately bullish! He thinks it’s kinda neat
You may be missing the sarcasm. I think crypto is neat, intellectually. I also think it’s a scam, and everyone in it will lose money and reputation, but I’m not going to put one hundred percent confidence in that view.
These are mutually compatible opinions. Read Levine’s insider trading takes and see if you think he’s pro insider trading.
Matt Levine is an opinion columnist, his job is to give commentary rather than to break news. Bloomberg overall has been pro-crypto (they have a crypto publication), but Levine's tone has always struck me as “finds it interesting but pretty skeptical of the real-world value”.
Here's a link to the (excellent) crypto story you mentioned: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-the-crypto-story/
I was referring to the NYTimes and WaPo puff pieces fwiw
The show Silicon Valley is still spot on with their satire. In the show there's a media outlet that writes badly about the company so they just outright buy the media outlet.
This comment would seem a lot more insightful if the legacy media wasn't, at this very moment, giving Sam Bankman-Fried a wet sloppy one. Where, exactly, are the pesky questions?
I've only seen the negative articles/links. Am I missing the media that is still fawning over him?
Did they start this because Pando (which they were also funding) shut down?
Pando shut-down? That’s a shame. They did some decent reporting, were my source of truth through my startup days (after TechCrunch sold to AOL, and it lost any credibility for me).
Yeah, I dunno. Doesn't seem like traditional media were very critical of crypto and more often than not tried to ride the wave of enthusiasm of each technological new thing. The only area traditional media were critical were areas that threatened their own existence and then they'd "huff, huff, long form journalism, huff huff, investigative journalism" but then we see such things as crypto scams and laptop scandals ignored and more often than not, if something was counternarrative it was labelled "disinformation" whatever it was.
Or, you know, because the "legacy media" had an order to shit on tech and not report neutrally: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33473275 (except SBF, of course, they were allowed to praise him)
But no, of course, it was because they had "questions" and everything in tech is Adam Neumann and Theranos.
Deliver me from thin-skinned billionaires trying to bankroll their own sycophant "news media". Just because the NYT (which does not represent "legacy media" any more than a16z represents the tech industry) had a few editors and reporters with illusions of grandeur, doesn't lend any more credibility to the money bags people.
I have had a target painted on my back before by someone with lots of money because they couldn't take a piece of criticism that I had for their company. Do you know how that feels? Normalizing retaliatory behavior by rich people (and yes, this outfit was part and parcel of a media strategy that included that) is destructive to civil society - while what the NYT did (though unprofessional) is still a normal aspect of a marketplace of ideas.
Compare this behavior with Jeff Bezos. For all his faults, he did something infinitely classier. He actually bankrolled a news organization that has a global presence and practices journalistic excellence - and did not try to meddle in its editorial policy beyond that (or if he did, it was so subtle as to be imperceptible).
Four of the top five largest companies are tech companies. Tech is arguably the most powerful industry in the world. It has a huge impact on almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives.
The goal of journalism is to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted", so why should publishers not take a critical stance toward some of the most comfortable people in the history of humankind?
Journalists should always be skeptical of everything, but not default to opposition without cause. They shouldn't work under orders to paint a certain industry in a negative light without regard for what's actually happening, especially when there's a conflict of interest as players from that industry compete with their companies.
If there's something happening in tech that worthy of criticism, criticize it. If there's something worthy of praise, praise it. And for the rest: report it. Only presenting negative things is about as useful as only presenting positive things. But it feels more journalistic, "speaking truth to power" and all that. It's not, negativity just sells better.
Future.com was more PR than news.
It reminds me of Paul Graham's old essay on PR firms, which unintentionally(?) contained the best advertisement for the NYT I've ever read.
> At the other extreme are publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Their reporters do go out and find their own stories, at least some of the time. They'll listen to PR firms, but briefly and skeptically. We managed to get press hits in almost every publication we wanted, but we never managed to crack the print edition of the Times.
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
A tech venture capital firm starting a publication to write about tech is always going to be PR.
It's not like Future.com was ever going to write a piece about an AH company that is bad.
That is a hell of a recommendation.
i chuckle every time this article comes up, since it was originally about me.
You worked at the Schwartz PR firm?
scroll down the bottom and read the correction
Never heard of Future.com but I guess he needs to cut costs everywhere as he's been losing money betting huge on crypto and probably is realizing he is losing money on Adam Neumman too. Probably lucky he missed getting scammed on FTX as he supposedly could not invest due to being an investor in Coinbase
https://www.wsj.com/articles/andreessen-horowitz-went-all-in...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/business/dealbook/adam-ne...
https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/30/andreessen-horowitz-do...
I’m not sure that’s true. Semafor reported that a16z's returns were 15x at the beginning of 2022 [1]. Obviously that’s probably lower now but the reason they were so high is that they got inside access to their companies’ tokens and dumped them on retail before the crash. Crypto has been an upward transfer of wealth on an unprecedented scale.
[1] https://www.semafor.com/article/11/16/2022/andreessen-passed...
Chris Dixon and those crooks 100% let retailers hold the bag for all the worthless tokens they were able to dump on the public.
But still the 15x is surprising to me, then again if its based on last years mark to market it makes sense.
Fairly certain all their investments in crypto are going to zero though.
Running a publication like future.com costs peanuts. If they are pinching pennies like this, a16z must be in big trouble?
Maybe more along the lines of if your freely accessible vanity press gets no readers does that reflect well.
Not necessarily. Now that Twitter is in friendlier hands, they simply may not feel the need to shovel more SEO blogspam into the furnace.
You are probably right. It does look like a SEO spam site!
It still comes down to cost/benefit -- no matter how small the cost monetarily, there's still the conceptual/attention/time aspect, and it's always possible for the benefit to be so little that the cost isn't justified.
Their business model is even more sinister according to Nicholas Weaver.
"New A16Z: Securities Fraud as a Business
• Invest in several "blockchain" startups
• Startups issue new tokens promising something, eventually
• These are unlicensed securities and this is blatantly illegal in the US, just not enforced by the SEC!
• A16Z gets a ton of these tokens, sells to retail suckers
• Ideally gets listed on Coinbase, but sketchier exchanges will do • They did that just now with "APE" token!
• If SEC ever wakes up...
• It is the startups that committed the securities fraud, not A16Z! So they are safe with their money!
"
Link: https://su22.cs161.org/assets/lectures/cryptocurrency.pdf
My suspicion is that Coinbase may not be as solvent as we would like either. There have been too many exchange scams to truly believe anyone is clean.
We now know that outright market manipulation at a massive scale was happening through ftx, there is minimal reason btc can’t fall back to 2013 levels with such schemes out of the picture.
https://cryptoslate.com/kraken-coinbase-and-gate-io-publish-...
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1679788/000162828021...
Since Coinbase is a publicly traded company and under the SEC, it is actually the exchange we probably have the best and most accurate info on.
Should have invested in Shorts.com
If you’ve been through enough cycles, you know what things like this mean and it usually means the opposite of what the general public thinks. The public will think that it means get out of risky tech bets now. Start thinking about getting out of risky tech bets when Future.com type sites launch, for VC firms are using their media capabilities and unloading their bags.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/15/andreessen-horowitz-goes-i...
June 15, 2021 was a nice time to start thinking about restructuring your portfolio.
Conversely I think now is a good time to think the other way. The European Central Bank is publishing papers about how Bitcoin failed. No one wants to invest in anything risky and wants to only buy T-bills. The Nasdaq is down 28.3% YTD. The FED has admitted they need to slow rate hikes. Putin is 70 and has pancreatic cancer and Parkinson’s, in addition to many in his own country wanting him dead. No market condition lasts forever.
>Putin is 70 and has pancreatic cancer and Parkinson’s,
I'd definitely love to see a source for that that's half credible. I've seen enough reports of bad health and impending death for many famous people for many years to take few of them seriously without a decent source or good evidence. This applies especially when it's someone that lots of people would love to see fall off the world stage as soon as possible. Wishful thinking turned speculation and all that..
https://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-cancer-surgery-claim...
This seems to be a good summary. Of course it is always going to be tough to know the truth about the health of such a public figure. For me it is enough to believe something is definitely amiss, but maybe I’m more optimistic than most.
Hold on, didn't it come out recently with SBF that parkinsons drugs cause reckless gambling?
Wait, does SBF also have the disease now? Honestly curious if this too is a rumor or something known.
He was allegedly getting high off the medicine, not using it for treatment
A16Z gets wrongly categorized as a "VC" company.
I'd argue they are actually a media company, who makes investments in what they want to promote.
The media side is the sell side the VC side is the buy side. You trumpet your companies and people so you have more brand around them. Other people buy into those companies and brands which increases the value of those items. Rinse and repeat until you go to the public markets or found an exit worthwhile.
They realized that buy having strong promotion that increases the perceived value of their people, companies and founders. It also makes getting LPs easier.
Look to Elon for a core example of this phenom.
Arguing if they are a media company or a VC is irrelevant - it serves the same purpose.
That was my hunch with Clubhouse. Clubhouse would've never got the reach if it was not for A16Z hyping them up.
Probably - Clubhouse had a lot of action before they really started hyping them. That failure probably hurts a bit since there was a lot of literal time spent speaking on platform which I think they truly thought Clubhouse was going to be a lasting change. I think the discovery aspect and the spammy, vapid conversations on platform once you reached scale tanked that product.
That said that if there was an audience for their efforts still functionally valuable for the time spent on platform.
One could argue YC is close to that too. But instead of having them in house - their relationships with TechCrunch, HN, etc are a broad megaphone to their desired audience.
I'd say YC is more organic.
A16Z is more direct.
A16Z made investments directly in actual media outlets like BuzzFeed, ProductHunt, Future.com, etc.
It'd sure be interesting to see what they spend on marketing and PR vs. other VC firms. Only because I think of their product being "successful exits", I lean toward a framing of "VC with an emphasis on content and brand marketing".
There’s precedent for that in illiquid alternatives - several publishers had internal investment arms that grew into distinct GPs.
If you run the media and investment efforts into a company does that make it insider trading?
totally agree and know many who recognize exactly that
Interesting enough, it was in August that I received a reachout for them, where they offered to pay me to write for Future.com and also keep my rights and re-publish later. I declined off the bat [1], because as I checked the site, the a16z association was pretty clear and I personally wanted to avoid being associated with the biggest crypto VC investors.
It sounds like those were the last few months when the publication was still running. I wonder if they simply struggled to find people to write?
[1] https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1598666595274051586
"If i were a coder in my 20s again, i know exactly where i would go work right now. what an incredible moment."
When I was a coder in my 20s, one of my co-workers came back from some conference with a glossy flyer for a new game company startup. It had a lineup of people in various costumes: cowboy, astronaut, soldier. It said something like, "We're looking for superstar developers to create the next level in gaming. If that's you, come join us."
I sure wish I had paid more attention to that flyer for the fledgling Electronic Arts :-)
Lol funny how EA was after 10x developers a while back already.
Gaming companies have fame to exploit coders though, probably EA stock makes it worth it if you were in it tho
Yep, exactly -- I had life emergencies that somewhat excuse my lack of foresight, but I can't help but think my life would be very different if I had joined EA back in...1982?
Twitter is firing people left and right, then bringing some back only to fire them again. Seemingly without direction. The only reason I could see Twitter being a good place to go for a young coder is the potential to work closely with Musk, as the environment, other staff, and problem set are all very unlikely to be beneficial for one's knowledge or career. I doubt Musk would invest much personal capital in a random young programmer, though Im open to being told I'm wrong there, as I recognize the media itself has a strong bias against him.
I'm honestly not sure what the basis was when this was posted.
What does this quote refer to, where does it come from, and what message are you trying to convey by republishing it here?
It's a tweet by Marc Andreessen about Twitter. https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1593864520815898626
If you're a coder in your 20's and you're not degrading yourself for the chance to be in the same room as a wealthy man that doesn't care an iota about you or your life, what are you even doing? /s
Please don't cross into personal attack on HN.
You may not owe wealthy men better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. The issue is what this sort of bile does to us, in our own community.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I recognize this as reactionary and low value, and will refrain from similar in the future. I fail to see how it is a personal attack, though. If you have the time (I know you're busy around here), the connection would be elucidating. I don't see lampooning a statement another has made as a personal attack on that person, especially when I'm attacking the content of the statement with no regard for its maker.
Asserting what a person "doesn't care about" in order to make them look bad strikes me as unduly pejorative and therefore an attack.
Ahh, so an attack on Musk as opposed to Marc. Makes sense. I wasn't intending to make Musk look bad with that statement, just pointing out what I believe to be the fallacy in Marc's viewpoint, but I get how your interpretation would be the common one. Thanks!
I'm a coder in my 30s now. But when I was a coder in my 20s, FWIW almost all the wealthy (male) investors I interacted with were not degrading towards myself and my peers FWIW. And the ones that were tended to be in their 20s or early 30s.
+1, the most insulting people I've met were the young "entrepreneur" types, not older/accomplished/actually wealthy people.
The older and accomplished ones have nothing to prove and have been that way long enough that they've had a chance to grow out of old habits.
i am in my 30s now and in my 20s they were super nice to me. its just that in retrospect i see how that was a tactic to exploit me. and to be very clear i benefited from my relationships with them quite a bit! but a spade is a spade and luck had a lot to do with my exits. if i hadn't been so lucky they would have just exploited me without there being ends to justify the means
> they were super nice to me. its just that in retrospect i see how that was a tactic to exploit me
Omg. Then what isn’t exploitative?! There’s always a bit of a selfish motive in developing partnerships or friendships even.
This is next level victimization.
In this thread: HN fails to understand flattery, a behavior that features heavily in popular culture with a clear record in literature dating back 3,000+ years, and a heavily-covered topic in early childhood education since time immemorial.
What part of flattery did they fail to understand?
Also, it's survivorship bias, to a degree. Being nice is just as much tool as being smart, and you can wield it with intent that is just as malicious. Truly successful people have to wield many tools successfully, it's only natural that one of the easiest to master is commonly used.
You never know what people's intent is, and you should assume the best until proven otherwise, but like you say, a spade is a spade, and being nice is useful to the people being nice.
Thanks for your reflections, certainly it's important to have in mind that VC's are innit for the money, which makes the world spin
To be fair, OP said degrading yourself, not that they degrade you.
I wasn't trying to imply that Musk would do any degrading. He does however expect the employees to do it themselves, given the working hour expectations and minimal consideration for stability he's given Twitter's employees.
I say this as someone who sees nothing wrong with cranking out 60+ hour weeks if that's your thing.
And Gordon Gecko type characters are already pretty rare to begin with, especially in the Bay Area.
Gordon Gekko type behavior is pretty rare around the Bay Area in public. You'd be shocked to see how some top financiers and executives act in private among peers who can (supposedly) be trusted. The mask really comes off, especially after a few drinks and some recreational pharmaceuticals.
It's a big club, and you ain't in it.
Some degree of greediness, and other unattractive characteristics, displayed in private is to be expected in even the most virtuous figures.
What is unusual however are those who are consistently sleazy.
Nobody intelligent spends their time hanging out or working with likely backstabbers, if they have any other choice.
Which is why I feel confident in my assertion, even though I haven't personally inspected every private club and office in the region.
In the Bay it’s about “Making the World a Better Place”, which is the all-important fig leaf to cover up the uncouth sin of hypercapitalist greed.
Wish I had the power to upvote more than once.
hmmm you seem like the exact sort of chap i'd love to hire! plz send resume as well as a signed consent for the doors to be locked from the outside while you are inside the (mandatory) office!
But now that he's in his 50s, he knows better.
Would love to see Marc Andreessen go bust. He’s the big shill behind all the NFT and crypto pumps stealing money from Main Street.
Mind-blowing that comments here believe it's a cost-cutting measure as opposed to the result of changes in internal priorities.
Chris Dixon just blocked you for reading these comments.
Seems like AH is starting to cover their crypto traces.
Isn't the fact that they've refreshed and renewed https://a16zcrypto.com/ and focused less on the general https://future.com/ direct evidence to the contrary?
Meta point: isn't it bizarre that people are so eager to draw conclusions without any underlying evidence?
In an ironic turn of the universe we learn that archive.org didn't need a blockchain to maintain an authoritative record. #goodenough
Is an archive.org entry admissible in court? Is there a legal precedent for this?
Would it be admissible as evidence of Russian war crimes in the Ukraine war for example? Evidence of ear crimes put up on social media, taken down because they violate terms of service, but still preserved in a way that validates they're legitimate.
Archive.org will remove content when requested by the website owner, and in other cases.
https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-request-to-remove-som...
But at least they don't modify stuff. What they have you can trust to be accurate, but you can't trust it to still be there tomorrow.
Designing a system that can't be modified is an interesting exercise, and potentially could be one of the few where a blockchain might actually be useful.
This may help dispel some errant thoughts: Unless there is an authority for verifying records made to an immutable, authenticated, verified, distributed, bft ledger, multiple distinct versions of the same event can be recorded and the act and content recorded for posterity. The ledger's guarantees merely cover the boundary of the act of recording, but not the thought that is recorded.
So, opinions alert:
Truth is not a balance sheet. It is not a mathematical object, in its entirety.
Authorities will always be necessary. This will require social trust.
Social trust is the natural byproduct of healthy societies and its erosion a leading indicator of subsequent demise.
I'm a bit confused by what you're saying. It sounds like you're implying there's 3 different objects here but then you talk about only 2 in your opinion. Accuracy/authenticity of the digital content, authenticity of the distribution of that content, and the interpretation of that content (using external context).
I'd think the first is a mathematical/cryptographically solvable problem, assuming you trust (human decision) whatever hardware/software generates the content. The 2nd is solvable in a decentralized way when the first is solved. and the latter is probably always a human/societal decision.
But why does the need for social trust impact technological solutions to the first two? Especially when deep fakes become more and more relevant in society.
> you talk about only 2 in your opinion.
Truth, authority, trust. (3)
The first is not mathematical. Any device that relies on mathematics at its core will fail to meet the demand of "is this true?" (Yes it can sign, authenticate, and verify (and store) sequences of 0s and 1s.)
The second is a social phenomena by definition. Authority affects the suspension of disbelief. That is [one of] its primary function. At best technology can stake a claim to subordinate qualities of reliability of function, and fidelity to specifications. This tech is certified implementation of such and such wonderful design. It's an 'authoritative' realization. There is the limit for authority of technology.
Finally, trust.
Picture this trial in an imaginary 'hate hour' type of country. The defendant is a political prisoner.
"Your honor, these facts have been established mathematically. Unequivocally, these messages were sent and signed by the defendant. This is a proven fact."
"Your honor, they put a gun to my client's privates and had him sign that message which he didn't even write with his keys."
So on to trust. Continue imagining that you are a "red-pilled" citizen of that society watching it on the tubes. Now try being blue-pilled and repeat the exercise. What technology will rid us of these pesky colored pills?
--
We should not waste resources on solutions that can not even theoretically address the critical issues around (perceived) truth, authority, and trust, since these are ultimately and fundamentally human social issues.
Beyond costs-benefits considerations, a secondary ill effect of the blockchain madness here is obfuscating the matter just discussed and creating a pervasive errant thought in a portion of the lay public that technology has obviated the need for authority and trust on certain matters, contrary to the actual state of affairs.
p.s. technology should only be pervasively adopted to improve the human condition.
Do you treat truth and authenticity as the same thing? A camera can take and sign a picture while proving it's not compromised. That picture is authentic but depending on the context the picture is presented in may or may not be true.
Yes and yes: https://www.theregister.com/2018/09/04/wayback_machine_legit...
Don't they have an entirely separate "crypto research" arm?
Better headline: "Private Propaganda Publication Perishes"
Is it news? Dunno. Hopefully the world is a little better off with one less dripping teat of commercial bullshit.
I wonder how much time they had to spend tweaking the announcement language to avoid the obvious irony.
I don't really understand, can someone explain to me what is going on in Ben Horowitzs' head? He wrote excellent books, seems like a really smart and nice person... And then decides to double down on Neumann, and also go in on nfts? What is the thought process?
It's a shame that Future.com didn't pan out. I could care less what people like Kara Swisher or anyone at The New York Times [1] thinks about technology or the companies changing industries. The only people who seem to write are activists.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33456708
At least he has a nice domain.
commonwordliteralmeaning.com is very 90s .com boomish, not very Future.
which is what you would go for if your goal was to supplant a regular media publication.
This is so funny!
“Let’s make a ‘newspaper’ about how good and clever we are at business!” sounds like something you’d hear somebody say after seeing them snort a massive line of adderall.
What’s next? “Let’s start a newspaper about how enormous my dick is and my completely real ability to do a standing backflip!”
Good riddance. The Future they're selling is not the future I (and others) want.
:/ it was no First Round Review
Lets not get confused by the marketing. These people are peddling magic beans.